


The only gift

by spiderfire



Category: Minority Report (TV 2015)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene, Recovery, Terrorists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 03:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5650924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Pre-Crime ends, there is a terrorist attack on Washington D.C. The pre-cogs were not there to see it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The only gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voleuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/gifts).



**2055, a year after the end of Pre-Crime**

Arthur slammed the door shut and stormed down the porch steps. His bike was parked next to Dash’s and he swung onto it with a thoughtless fluid motion. Just six months ago he would have tripped over his own feet, made clumsy by anger and still not at home in his body that had grown nearly a foot while he had been in the milkbath. He had learned much in the last year. 

The bike roared to life between his knees and he tore off down the driveway that connected their house to the road. What was going on with Agatha and Dash? Earlier Agatha screamed at him. All he had done was leave the math he was studying out on the table. Then he had gone to get Dash for lunch and had found him sitting outside at the picnic table in tears. “What is it?” he had asked. “Did you see something?”

Dash had said, “No,” as he scrubbed the tears from his face. “It’s nothing.”

While serving lunch, Agatha had dropped the bowl that he had given her for her birthday, her first birthday since they had been freed. The bowl was ceramic, a pretty thing made by a some guy who lived on the other end of the island, but it was not important. It was just a bowl. 

Dash must have seen it because he had dove to the floor to try and catch the bowl, but he missed. The bowl had shattered into a hundred pieces. A lake of soup spread across the floor, soaking Dash’s pants. That had set Agatha off and she had started sobbing. Dash, kneeling in the puddle of tomato soup had yelled at him for making Agatha cry. He hadn’t even said anything! It was just some bowl. Who cared! 

To the hell with it. He had grabbed his jacket and left the two of them behind. 

The wind in his hair, the clear air in his lungs, the freedom of the bike drove his pissy siblings from his mind. He went too fast, taking corners too tight, letting the tail end of the bike skid out behind him. When he and Dash rode like this, egging each other onward, faster and faster, Dash usually took the lead. Not by much, never by much, Arthur would not let him, but he saw things that Arthur did not.

Riding alone, without Dash’s instincts to warn him, Arthur had some near misses with oncoming traffic. However, the information he got in each tire squealing swerve was amusing enough to keep him going. Les Savage had $193,876 in his savings account. It was not going to be enough. Enough for what? Tony Phillips (who lived alone at 18 Filamer Road) was driving with Martha McConnell (who lived with her husband on the other side of the island at 87 Seaside). It had been exactly eight days since they had last been together. And then it was Amy Triton and something about 4047. It was always different. Addresses, numbers, names, facts with no context. He was trying to learn to control it with meditation, but it was hit or miss.

There was a convenience store up ahead. After the debacle that had become of lunch, he was hungry. He parked the bike and went in. 

Arthur liked this little store. The store was run by two old men who had lived on the island for decades. Dusty boxes of prepared cookies, cans of processed meat and bags of factory-manufactured soup lined the shelves. Most of the snobby inhabitants of the island turned their noses up at such artificial fare, but he liked it well enough. The technology in the store was as ancient as everything else: the cash register printed out streams of paper tape, the coffee maker made only one kind of coffee, there was a microwave behind the counter that had actual buttons and a heavy-looking boxy cube hung over the check-out counter continuously streaming old movies. 

Arthur wandered around the store picking out chips, a bottle of juice and a microwavable bag of some sort of pasta. He brought his food up to the cash register. Tony, one of the store’s owners, stood behind the counter. 

“How is it going Arthur?” Tony asked. 

Arthur shrugged. “How about you?” 

“Can’t complain,” Tony said. Tony’s fingers brushed against Arthur’s as the old man reached across the counter to scan the food. Arthur jerked back as a flood of numbers hit his mind. Bank accounts, perhaps. It went too fast. 

Tony looked up at him with a quirked eyebrow. “You okay?” 

“Just static,” Arthur said, recovering. “Sorry. Can you microwave my lunch?” 

Tony picked up the bag of pasta, cracked it open and put it in the microwave. “Sure,” he said. “How’s Dash?” he asked as he turned back around. 

Arthur was not listening. An image on the screen caught his eye. _Breaking news_ the screen proclaimed, white against a blue background. The image cut to a woman standing in front of…smoke, chaos. An ambulance zipped by behind her. 

His knees felt suddenly weak and he could hear his heart pounding in his ears. He leaned forward, holding himself up on the counter. He pressed his fingers against the scratched wood until they hurt. “Arthur?” Tony asked, concerned. “You sure you are okay?”

“Can you put the sound on?” Arthur said, his voice cracking. His eyes were fastened on the ancient monitor. 

Tony said, “Sure. What is…” and then he glanced up at the screen and his eyes went wide. He scrambled for the remote. 

The woman’s voice became audible, “…no one has claimed responsibility. For those of you just joining us, there have been simultaneous terrorist attacks …I am sorry, Bill.” She pressed her finger to her ear, listening in her ear bud before continuing, “I just got a report that officials will be announcing a preliminary estimate of casualties within the next hour. Their number is expected to be in the thousands..” 

“Four thousand,” Arthur whispered, suddenly knowing it was true, “forty-seven.” 

“What?” Tony said, tearing his eyes away from the screen. 

“I’ve got to go,” Arthur said, running toward the door. 

“Your lunch!” Tony called after him.

But Arthur ignored him. He jumped on the bike and raced home. The ride home had none of the thrill of the ride to the store. Arthur was grim and aggressive, focused only on the mechanical challenge of getting home as fast as possible. 

Dash’s bike and Agatha’s car were right where they always were. After parking his bike, he ran up the stairs, flung open the door and stumbled over the threshold. 

Dash and Agatha were half to their feet, partially eaten sandwiches on their plates. “What is it?” Agatha asked as he stumbled in. “What’s wrong?” Dash asked at the same time. 

He looked at them. How had they not known? Or maybe they had. Wordlessly, he turned and swept his hand across the screen. The news came up, text and images scrolling across the transparent surface, every one of them showing the tragedy: smoke, a crying mother, sirens, screams, rescue workers lugging stretchers, frantic reporters repeating themselves to fill the airtime. 

Dash sat down hard. “Oh,” he said. 

Agatha stared, wide-eyed. “So that’s…”

“Did you see this?” Arthur demanded, spinning around to stare at them. “Did you know?” 

A man on the screen had a casualty count. 1662, so far. 

Agatha shook her head. “I felt…panic. Fear. Before lunch. I didn’t know it was a vision. I thought I was remembering the...”

He did not want to hear what horror Agatha was reliving. He interrupted her. “Dash?” 

Dash shook his head. “It was...not clear. I didn’t think it was…” 

Agatha looked at him. “What about you?”

“I just got the number. Four thousand, forty seven.” Arthur said. “I think it’s the number of deaths.”

“Oh, god.” Agatha said. 

Dash stared at the screen. “We could have stopped this,” he said softly. 

Arthur turned on Dash. “How?” he demanded. “You and Agatha did not see enough. What I got was too late, with no context.”

Dash just looked at him and he suddenly knew what Dash meant. Had they been in the milkbath, had they been linked, there was no way they would have missed this. He backpedalled. “No,” he said. “No way. I would rather die.”

And Agatha was there, putting her arm around him. “No one is asking…” 

He shrugged Agatha’s arm off and turned away, waving his hand at the screen to turn it off. 

“It’s like when we were still in rehab,” Agatha said behind him. “When there were murders in the city.” 

They had ridden out the visions together. The cops had not asked and they had not offered. In the hours between therapy sessions when they were supposed to be resting, they sometimes spoke of them. But, more often, not. The island not only offered anonymity, it offered relief from the onslaught. Truth be told, it was the only thing about the island that Arthur liked. 

His eyes settled on the table. He saw the part-eaten sandwiches his siblings had abandoned. Suddenly he remembered his own failed attempts at lunch and his stomach rumbled. He turned his back on them and walked toward the fridge, “Dash,” he asked as he walked, “did you leave me any cheese?”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a variant on the quote "The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was my (brother / sister / siblings)." Writing about these three, it is really striking how much they have each other. 
> 
> I discovered Minority Report during Christmas break. I think I have watched every episode like five or six times since I found it. Maybe I can single handedly get it renewed! ;) I hope you liked it!


End file.
